Handy Decoder Ring

For translating face to face and print learning to online learning experiences. I stole the use of the term “Decoder Ring,” from my friend Katy, who applies the term to tools or information aids that just make sense of a lot of categories that a user might not be familiar with. The beauty of any decoder ring or Rosetta-Stone-type translation tool is that it bridges the gap of misunderstanding that can divide two parties. In this case the two parties are an instructional designer and the SME’s or subject matter experts. My hope was to accomplish two things:

Begin to show the wonderful possibilities for online learning and help get their creative juices flowing

Start to explain what I needed from the SME’s to get the ball rolling

Now this is my first stab at this, and it’s far from done. I still have not finished the columns indicating which levels of Blooms Taxonomy or Gagne’s Nine Events for Learning. Also, the Online Training Decoder Ring would only be complete if there were examples or live links to examples to share. This is an undertaking I need to spend some time on. I have a good number of examples, it’s just a matter of posting them to my server.

Also, many of the examples I provide here rely primarily on Adobe products to develop. This isn’t to say that you could use less-expensive or even free open source solutions to these products. But again, if you want to maintain what you build it’s nice to have reliable tools with adequate end user support from a licensing agreement.

If you have an suggestions or additions to the “Decoder”please let me know via e-mail or comments to this post.